Jan Dibbets (1941)
For Jan Dibbets, the execution of a work of art is more important than the idea. 'You can work out an idea in a million different ways, but an artwork can only derive its impact from the personal way in which it is executed.'* This notion sets Dibbets apart from other conceptualists, among whose numbers he is often counted.
After beginning his career as a painter, in 1967 Dibbets began working in a wide variety of disciplines, all with the medium of photography as the underlying basis. But he never truly saw the world as a photographer, always maintaining the eye of a painter. Dibbets excels at watching, observing and manipulating the subject. Even in his earliest photographic works, you see the artist playing with the rules of perspective as traditionally applied in the art of painting. He never ceases to find inspiration in the optical illusion of space on the flat surface. A number of recurring aspects found throughout his oeuvre are his perspective corrections and the windows. In these works, Dibbets often combines a photographed space with an alteration of perspective. His ingenious plays on light, colour and the flat surface put his oeuvre on the map internationally.
* A. de Visser, De tweede helft, Nijmegen 1998, p. 213
